Lithic variability and Middle Paleolithic behavior: New evidence from the Iberian Peninsula (original) (raw)
Related papers
ABSTRACT This project was borne out of recent research (Preston 2011; Preston 2013; Preston 2014) which suggests that whilst many researchers have set ambitious goals in attempting to create social narratives from Mesolithic lithic scatters in a landscape context, or sought to derive socio-cultural/stylistic meaning from them, such attempts have been arguably impeded by their reliance upon referential frameworks that fail to integrate, adequately, their theoretical base with systematic methodologies in support of their conclusions. While laudable, and recognising the rich debate that emanates from the research, British Mesolithic studies—and concomitantly the so-called ‘Mesolithic Canon’ (sensu Milner and Woodman 2005)—have been hampered by the lack of three fundamental analytical foundations: 1) a consensus definition of the Mesolithic, its phases and its geographic variation; 2) an accurate, calibrated, sufficiently granular chronology, and; 3) an explicitly defined, standardised, replicable lithic analysis methodology and typology. The most important of these is the third: it underpins the other two. However, this issue is especially acute since there are no agreed minimum standards for analysis and there remain a number of incompatible, unsystematic non-technological methodologies. It is therefore difficult to compare assemblages analysed by different lithicists, to derive reliable conclusions from past analyses and literature, and to communicate interpretations with universal clarity. Hence, interpretations tend to be subjective, result in para data rather than meta data, and are difficult to test in a replicable way. More information is available at: http://lithoscapes.co.uk/projects/meso-lithics-project/ REFERENCES: Preston, P. R., 2011, Lithics to Landscapes: Hunter Gatherer tool use, resource exploitation and mobility during the Mesolithic of the Central Pennines, England, Unpublished D.Phil. Thesis. School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford. http://goo.gl/01BVlW Preston, P. R., 2013, Bones, Stones or Ethnography? Challenging the Mesolithic Mobility Models for Northern England, In Mobility, Transition, and Change in Prehistory and Antiquity. Proceedings of the Graduate Archaeology Organisation Conference on the Fourth and Fifth of April 2008 at Hertford College, Oxford, UK (eds. P. R. Preston, and K. Schorle), 29–48, British Archaeological Reports, Internnational Series, Archaeopress. http://goo.gl/Jx62oY Preston, P. R., 2014, Everything we Know is Wrong? The MESO-lithics Project: Charging lithics into the Mesolithic Canon, Where the Wild Things Are 2.0: Further Advances in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Research Conference, University of Durham January 2014, UK. http://goo.gl/9tmffI
Book of abstracts form the 9th scientific conference Methodology and Archaeometry
Book of abstracts form the 9th scientific conference Methodology and Archaeometry, 2021
The scientific conference Methodology and Archaeometry is being organised by the Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences since 2013. The goal of the conference is to entice interdisciplinarity, critical thinking, new insights and approaches as well as new theoretical frameworks in contemporary archaeological science
Alves, L. B. 2015. Review of José Julio García Arranz, Hipólito Collado Giraldo and George Nash, eds. The Levantine Question: Post-Palaeolithic Rock Art in the Iberian Peninsula—El problema ‘Levantino’. Arte rupestre postpaleolítico en la Península Ibérica (Archaeolingua Main Series 26. Budapest: Archaeolingua Alapítvány—Cáceres: Universidad de Extremadura, 2012, 425pp., 96 colour figs., 51 b/w figs., 15 maps, 9 tables, hbk, ISBN 978-693-9911-31-4), European Journal of Archaeology 18 (1): 161-165